192 



GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



most part, pyramids. On the walls fresco paintings are introduced in various 

 places between the trees. In the arbour walks of the queen's garden are 

 seats, and opposite to them windows through which views can be had of the 

 fountains, statues, and other objects in the open garden. The parterres in 

 the queen's garden are surrounded by hedges of Dutch elms about four feet 

 high. The seats and prop-work of all the arbours, and the trellis work on 

 the fruit tree walk, are painted green. All along the gravel walks and round 

 the middle fountain are placed orange trees and lemon trees in portable 

 wooden frames and flower pots about them." 



At The Hague the most important garden was that of the Royal Palace ; 

 it was laid out in the seventeenth century, but in later years the formal 

 vyver was converted into an " English " lake and the gardens were entirely 

 remodelled and spoiled. The plan engraved by Jacob de Remier in 1730 

 shows the garden parterres unspoiled, and is also quite a study in itself of the 

 smaller town gardens of the court officials. In the neighbourhood of The 

 Hague were several important palaces with gardens upon a large scale ; 

 Ryswick, Honslaerdyck, Sorgvliet and the " Huis t'en Bosch," or House in 

 the Wood (illus., p. 194), were all designed upon a very large scale, but with 

 the exception of the last have all disappeared. Honslaerdyck, between The 

 Hague and the Hook, was one of the finest seats in the Low Countries, and 

 the favourite palace of William III, who replanned it upon the foundations 

 of an old manor house, and fitted it up wdth great magnificence. Behind the 

 palace was an extensive bosquet regularly planted, and beyond was a menagerie 

 where foreign birds and beasts w^ere kept in large numbers. An engraving 

 in the Nederlandsche Hovenier shows the gardens as they existed in the seven- 

 teenth century, and they have also been engraved by Vischer. 



The Chateau of Sorgvliet, on the road to Schevening, was another im- 

 portant country seat near The Hague ; it belonged to the Duke of Portland, 

 was often visited by William and Mary and was the scene of many famous 

 fetes in the early eighteenth century. The great feature of these gardens 

 was an immense orangery planned as a semicircle with pavilions in the centre 

 and at both ends. There was also a mount known as Parnassus-berg, a 

 grotto with rockworks, cascades, berceaux, fishponds, a labyrinth, aviaries 

 for cranes and a series of fountains, which last are rarely to be met with in 

 Holland. All these features have long since disappeared, but a part of the 

 low one-story building still remains. In 1780, when Alderman Beckford 



